


Elementally, My Dear Watson

by Random_Nexus



Series: 221B-Consolation Prompt Fics - Various Sherlock Holmes Iterations [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 221b-Consolation, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Bisexuality, Homosexuality, Inter-Species Relationships, M/M, Multi, Necromancy, Other, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prompt Fic, Shapeshifting, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 12:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14308452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_Nexus/pseuds/Random_Nexus
Summary: In a canon AU where Holmes is a necromancer and Watson is a mage, but where homosexuality is still a crime, Holmes tracks Watson to his workshop to find he's magicked up something unusual.Written for the Prompt: "How about ACD Holmes/Watson/Morstan OT3 where one of them is some kind of lycanthrope/shapeshifter? (You pick which one and what kind). Sexytimes always welcome but not required." -Vulgarweedon Tumblr





	Elementally, My Dear Watson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vulgarweed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/gifts).



> The idea came pretty quickly, but the universe has been fighting me on this all the way. I kept running out of time to work on ANYTHING and then it tried (as they all do, really) to become a much bigger fic than I planned. It’s not like I’m surprised, or anything, but still… *sigh* [Vulgarweed](http://vulgarweed.tumblr.com/), my dear, I hope this is at least in the neighborhood of entertaining for you. Honestly, I may add on some of those sexytimes later, because I DID have some notions. Either way, here it is. (Forgive me for the title, I couldn't help myself!)

Holmes unlocked the well-oiled wrought iron grate that covered the also-locked solid wooden door, both swinging open easily on balanced hinges, and shivered just the slightest bit at the cold air swirling around his bare ankles. He was glad of the slightly shabby but thick dressing gown and equally aged yet cozy slippers as he went down, down, down the long spiral of stone stairs to where the flickering glow of lamplight teased out wavering shapes along stone walls built when good old London was still Londinium and this property was a fair way from the Thames and that settlement. Distances were so much shorter nowadays, it seemed; London had formed around the property that lay beneath what had become a portion of Baker Street, engulfing it in progress and modern amenities.

Just about the time the stairs were becoming tedious, Holmes reached the main basement level and passed through what appeared to be merely the dancing edge of the golden lamplight spilling into the smallish pentagonal area where the stairs ended and three of an original four corridors began; passing through that moving light as he stepped down from the final tread, Holmes felt a tingling breath of air that ruffled his coal-black hair and caressed his exposed skin with gentle warmth.

Unintentionally smiling, Holmes chose the right-most corridor—the only one lit—and strode six and a half metres down a well-swept and cobweb-free path until he reached another oaken door with a small window centred in the upper third of the door. The window was barely a handspan high and half that wide with glass nearly as thick as the door, distorting the view inside as though one peered through pale bluish fog. Holmes could make out movement inside, man-shaped and familiar, even when so vaguely viewed, and his small subconscious smile became a slightly more realised one as he reached for the latch. Had there been something important in the works, the window’s glass would be dark red and nearly impossible to see through—a clever magical ‘do not disturb’ sign.

“Magister, your Necromancer comes.” The words were low and rough, as if half-growled, and startled Holmes almost enough to gasp aloud, as he’d not seen any other shape through the window but the one he knew so well. As it was, he froze in the open door, long pale fingers still on the latch, head snapping to the side as he focused upon something decidedly _not_ his dear Watson.

“Ah, Holmes!” Watson said with a ready smile and plenty of warmth in his voice. “Just a moment. Be right with you.” He returned to writing something in his work journal with swift strokes of a pencil while studying a complicated magical emblem or sigil glowing a bright blue-white about a foot above the marble worktop to his right. The circle and protective wards etched into the worktop glowed gently, keeping the magical energies contained.

Meanwhile, the other presence in the room, human shaped and almost exactly the same dimensions as Watson, stood at one of the work tables full of arcane implements with an open tin of something in one dark hand and a small stone mortar bowl in the other. Looking for all the world as if shadows had been poured into a John Watson shaped mould and made solid, when the creature’s eyes met Holmes’ he could see they were the deepest golden red, like live coals buried in the ashes, and when the lips below parted again, its mouth held the same dull glow within. Less a being formed of shadows and more possibly something made of fire—an elemental, perhaps?

“Greetings, Necromancer.” The voice was soft, deep, and comprised of several simultaneous tones, like a low-toned pan pipe speaking words.

“Ash, you may address him as Mr. Holmes or simply Holmes, if you wish,” Watson said off-handedly while still writing. “Holmes, my latest… experiment, if you will… whom I have temporarily named ‘Ash’ for lack of anything more clever or unique.” He chuckled under his breath at himself.

“Mr. Holmes. You are my Magister’s partner and soul-keeper,” Ash said, tilting its—his?—head musingly. No hair or clothing interrupted the outline of its body, no genitalia altered the smooth inverted ‘v’ where legs joined torso.

“As he is mine, of course,” Holmes murmured with a nod, as there was no harm in admitting that much; at least to a homunculus, or elemental servant, or… whatever the thing was. Lifting one hand, he sketched a quick shape in the air with his first two fingers, leaving a trail of deep violet light that faded away perhaps a second afterward. “You are not merely animated matter or a magic-bound elemental. You are alive… Ash.”

“There, done.” Watson waved his hand in a particular gesture, then tapped one of the wards on his worktop, making the glowing image hovering above it dissipate with a high, clear sound like a crystal chime. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon or I’d have been upstairs waiting to share the news with you.” He closed his journal and pressed his forefinger to the lock, which responded with a quiet ‘snick’. “I conjured Ash this morning, but Ash is not precisely what I meant to bring forth.”

“Watson…” Holmes trailed off on a long-suffering sigh, knowing full well his protest was a lost cause.

Where Holmes had been tutored in the fine arts of magic, both High and Low forms, as well as his own calling—necromancy—from a very young age, Watson had come into his power later in life. In his early adulthood, actually, while serving as a soldier in the Middle East, Watson’s magical talents had burst into being in the midst of a war; not long after he’d nearly died, in fact, from a magical attack on his company. Wounded and desperate, Watson had somehow summoned four elementals to fight off the enemy soldiers and the Mage accompanying them; after which, the elementals had spirited him away to a hidden enclave of Mages avoiding the war, but not their craft. Taken in as a sort of emergency student, Watson spent months learning as he recovered, showing an aptitude for not only elemental magics but healing, as well. The methods he had been taught had proven effective enough, but because he’d come into magic sort of _in media res_ , Watson looked at the generally accepted tenets of Western magical practice as more guidelines than rules. Holmes had found Watson’s magical experiments fascinating, of course, as the man’s practice of them had brought them together, but the danger was quite concerning; he’d given lecture after lecture about the possible outcomes and the potential for entirely unknown outcomes, time and again, but Watson was as stubborn as he was talented.

If he were to be utterly honest, Holmes had done his fair share of ‘experimentation’, too, but even his most radical experiment was many times more controlled and planned out than some of Watson’s arcane explorations of the power of ‘what if’. It was only that their meeting had involved Holmes saving Watson from a deadly creature he’d accidentally drawn forth from the aether in the course of summoning the elemental spirits inhabiting the ‘haunted’ wing of one of the oldest Hospitals in London. It had been fortuitous that Holmes could animate the corpses lying in the morgue awaiting disposition to distract the thing while Watson sorted out how to banish it back to whence it sprang. Luckily, the elemental spirits Watson had contacted in the process were more than happy to help, their dangerously playful natures working in the two men’s favour, rather than in their usual pranks of hurling furniture and scaring the life out of the nightshift’s janitors and security wardens.

“I know, I know,” Watson replied, sighing right back at Holmes, but with an off-centre little smile that was unrepentant, teasing, and amused in equal measure. “Where would I be without one of the famous Holmes family’s greatest Mages?”

Holmes snorted and rolled his eyes heavenward. If it weren’t for the fact that he adored the man before him with his whole being, he would despair of him entirely; even so, he knew he often exasperated Watson in nearly equal measure. Holmes’ methods might be more meticulously planned and his Works more rigidly controlled, but he was still one of the most brilliant Necromancers of the age and had created more arcane tools with which to interrogate and interpret the dead and the manner in which they had become so than any single Necromancer before him. They were both explorers in their respective fields—Holmes in the Workings of the Dead and Watson in Elemental and Healing Works—and powerful channelers of magical forces.

“I shudder to think,” Holmes replied dryly, though smiling a bit, too. He narrowed his eyes and looked more deeply at this Ash whom Watson had brought forth. Something tickled his instincts, something near alarm, but closer to fascination. Blinking, he then widened his eyes upon turning to Watson. “You’ve bound it to you? Not just bound it with your power, but actually _bound it to your soul_?” He rose up to his full height, back stiff and shoulders tight. “Watson! _John!_ … what were you thinking?”

Grimacing, Watson snapped back, “I was thinking of conjuring a useful servant who could also guard us from both incorporeal and corporeal threats. It was meant to be more of a household familiar, able to work for either of us, but…” Shaking his head with a shrug, Watson let out a short, sharp breath and gestured at Ash. “I think one of my sigils was off.”

“But I _am_ useful, Magister,” Ash said, having taken up the pestle to grind whatever had been poured into the mortar bowl while speaking. Though the words could be taken as protest, the tone was even and nearly unemotional. “My life stems from yours and, by extension, your soul-keeper’s; I most certainly would defend you both with that life you have given me.” The being, homunculus, or… possibly ‘familiar’ would be the right term, after all… looked between the two men before returning the focus of that live-coal gaze to Watson. “I will also assist in both of your Workings, as required. I would say, if your aim was as you have stated, your experiment was a success.”

“Ash… formed from fire or earth?” Holmes said quietly, not caring if it seemed he was ignoring what the being had just said. He had actually taken that in and had then gone forward from it.

“Both, Mr. Holmes. My Magister’s focus was a stone brazier,” Ash replied, still grinding away with the pestle. “My primary elements are fire and earth, but my animus is closer to a human soul, since it stems from your joined souls.”

Watson nodded in resignation. “I really meant to call forth an elemental familiar, to give it the ability to channel fire and to embody the qualities of stone, and yet have the intelligence and flexibility of a more ordinary familiar. There have been a number of occasions where we could have used a guardian with the stopping power of a brick wall, let alone the ability to burn away the undead, as well as frighten off mortal hostiles. Think how a quick burst of controlled flame could put paid to any number of charms, hexes, or fetishes that might be used against us.” Shaking his head with another sigh, Watson smiled wistfully. “Ah, well.”

“Too bad Ash doesn’t look more human, or even resemble one of the cliché forms taken by familiars. Still… an utterly loyal servant with such capabilities will, indeed, be useful.”

“I can appear different to my base form,” Ash declared, setting the mortar and pestle aside. “As well as wield flame and make myself as impervious as stone.” The dark, nearly featureless being then wavered and shifted as if viewed through a lens of water, colours and details rising to its surface as its form solidified again. It looked identical to Watson in every particular, even its voice a very nearly perfect copy of the man’s as Ash added, “As you see, I could be taken for human, should it be wished.”

Holmes’ jaw fell open, if only a little, as he gazed in wonder at Watson’s arcane twin.

Watson’s jaw, too, fell open, but then he went on to fill the silence with a breathy exclamation of, “Bloody hell!”

The strange, multi-part quality of Ash’s voice was only the slightest bit in evidence underneath Watson’s own voice as the altered being grinned and said, “I am not trapped in one form as mortal creatures must be.” The same watery blur overtook the familiar features for a long moment, and then resolved into a taller, leaner form that Holmes instantly recognised from having seen it regularly in his mirror. Ash’s voice altered, as well, from the warm tenor syllables of middle-class speech to the cool baritone shaping the crisp phonemes peculiar to upper-class English. “You may ask any shape of me and I should be able to conform to it, gentlemen.”

“Jove!” Holmes whispered, rather overcome with wonder and, quite frankly, the excited anticipation of grand possibilities. “Watson, I believe you may have struck upon something more extraordinary than you planned, something I would even venture to call brilliant,” he concluded when he could form proper words once more.

Watson grinned, crossing his arms over his chest, chin elevated just a bit in subtle pride. His grin lessened to a mere smile a moment later, gone a little off-centre and set in a more thoughtful expression. “Oh, the potential,” he said, so softly as to be nearly inaudible.

Holmes was a beat behind in taking the leap, but then felt a hint of warmth invade his cheeks. Great gods below, before he’d come to join his life and his soul to his dearest friend, he had not known much of such worldly passions to which most men were subject, but he had grown to deeply enjoy the pleasures of the flesh with his lover and partner, despite the need to keep their love a secret, due to the laws against such ‘immoral acts’. Even so, Holmes could not help but speculate: what would it be like to roil in the lustful embrace of two John Watsons? Or to share his own Watson with a duplicate Sherlock Holmes? Or… well, the possibilities were bewilderingly infinite.

Ash looked between them again, the echo of Holmes’ own lips quirking into a speculative smirk before the wavering blur overtook the borrowed features and made of them a new visage, becoming shorter than both men and taking on a shape far more curved than Holmes’ or Watson’s, though with the latter’s golden-brown hair and sky-blue eyes. In a dulcet voice with a blend of several similar tones, a much-altered Ash offered, “I would enjoy exploring that potential with you, my Magister, Mr. Holmes.” One slender finger pointed to the simple image reproduced on the folded page of the nearby newspaper, heading an article on a woman who had recently discovered a fortune in jewels hidden by a father she’d thought long dead. Ash had brought the black and white image to life beautifully, informing the features with Watson’s own skin tone as well as his hair and eye colouring. The frock was the shape of the woman’s in the newspaper image, but coloured the mouse grey of Holmes’ dressing gown. “I may not be human, but by sharing a small sliver of your soul—both your souls, actually—I am capable of feeling the wants and desires inherent in human flesh.”

Holmes looked from the woman in the newspaper—her name Miss Mary Sholto—to her copy, made real and alive by Ash’s surprising capabilities. When he then looked over at Watson, it was to see interested curiosity in his friend’s perfectly copied blue eyes, and then Watson’s expression turned crafty.

“I know that expression, my dear Holmes,” he said in a sly tone. “You’ve had an idea.”

“I have had,” Holmes agreed, returning his speculative gaze to Ash.

Still wearing the shape of Miss Sholto, Ash blinked, head tilting again as a golden-red glow slowly took over the sky-blue borrowed from Watson’s eyes. “I am pleased to help my dear Magister in any way required, as well as you, his soul-keeper, Mr. Holmes. It intrigues me to contemplate learning more about those previously mentioned wants and desires, as well.”

“I’m beginning to suspect we may be able to explore some of them,” Watson said in a slow, thoughtful manner. “Though we will have to be sure you understand just what you may be getting into.”

“Let us adjourn upstairs and discuss our… options,” Holmes suggested with careful emphasis, holding out his hand to Watson.

“Yes, let’s,” he agreed, lifting questioning brows to his unprecedented conjuration as he extended his other hand, open and waiting. Ash hesitated only an instant before taking that hand and following up and up the ancient spiral staircase, all the way to the building built far more recently above and given the address of 221B Baker Street.

~~~

Several months later, in several of London’s most prominent newspapers, a smallish article was printed, officially proclaiming the marriage of Magister John Hamish Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, to a Miss Mary Ashborn Morstan, an orphan of no great social standing who had of late been employed as secretary to Mr. Watson’s best man. Said best man was the famous Necromancer Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who had been becoming increasingly well-known for his work in assisting Scotland Yard in solving murders and similar serious crimes. The groom in question, Mr. Watson, was often seen in company with Holmes on his investigations and was well known amongst the Scotland Yard set for his excellent protective wards and healing Works. However, in point of fact, it was more likely Mr. Holmes’ growing fame that had led to the article being anything more than a typical wedding announcement, buried in the social pages.

The image of the happy couple and the best man accompanying the article, was, of course, a reproduction of a photograph taken on the front steps of a humble temple in Westminster. As such, there was no way anyone could tell how the sparkle so evident in the bride’s eyes had seemed to linger far longer than was ordinary for such things. Human eyes simply didn’t glow golden-red, though the photographer had been too busy changing the plate in his camera to notice it at the time, while the three members of the wedding party were too distracted keeping up a façade of normalcy until safely tucked into the coach waiting to whisk them away to a quiet little cottage in Sussex.


End file.
